I remember sitting in a Wendy’s parking lot when Ross texted me and asked if I wanted to create a website with him. It’s been a crazy, wonderful ride over the last few years with i65. I never in my wildest dreams thought that it would’ve became what it did. During our height, we were getting thousands of views a month. I remember our Mizzou story getting over a thousand views the day that we dropped it. My pastor tweeted out my “Love the Black Athlete, Hate the Black Man” story and my phone blew up. The Derrick Rose open letter, the Luol Deng open letter. The More Than Just a Game Series. Interviewing Michael Bamiro, then offensive tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles and getting to go to the team hotel. All of it. It was insane to think about just how advanced we were in terms of the story quality that we had, the excellence we demanded from our writers. Most of this happened while we were in high school, yet the structure, the language used, even weaving in YouTube videos and tweets made us far more advanced than our years and I will forever be proud of that.

However, I think both Ross and I knew that there was a time limit on this — we never spoke on it, but it was there. Whether that meant handing i65 down to the next young, high school age sports fanatic to takeover or the end of the website, it was there in the back of our minds. Just ride the wave and let the good times roll. When the roller coaster is over, well…be able to get up and walk away.

It’s that time.

The website, realistically, hasn’t been properly active in over a year and Ross and I are delving into our own paths — I’m working on becoming the best damn multi-media sports journalist in the world, and Ross is working on becoming the next great General Manager. The writers that we’ve had have moved on to bigger and better things, which is great for them and their professional development. Truthfully, that’s all we could ever ask for, that i65sports was the breeding ground that lead to a cluster of great sports journalists. Brendan Lavell, who wrote on the NFL for us for about a year, told me a while ago that writing about sports, right here on i65, is when he knew that sports journalism was it for him. That’s about as close to I’ve come to tears regarding the website in a while.

Thank you to Cliff Brunt, friend and mentor to the website, for always being willing and able to share pieces of advice and occasionally write for us. Your talent level far superseded us, yet here you were trying to help get a couple of high schoolers website up and running. In the same ilk, thank you to Craig Dragash for your contributions.

Thank you to everyone that ever wrote an article on the website — Salem Abughnaim, Khary Armster, Alex Bothwell, Michael Bruhin, Zoey Davis, Devin Hampton, Andrew Hussey, Sam Kelly, Brendan Lavell, Chandler Page and Joshua Short. Whether it was 1 article or 10 or 100, your belief in what we had here made all the difference and I’m so happy that we had a space for all of these gifted writers to lend their voices.

Finally, thank you to my business partner and roommate, Ross Weber. Thank you for asking me to be a part of this ride with you. Thank you for allowing me to have creative freedom and bring in people as I saw fit. Thank you for believing in my ability as a writer.

​ This is not the end for us. Some of us, as noted, have diverged on different paths. Others are still going full steam ahead — Andrew is going to make a hell of a beat writer (and more!) in the very near future, considering his already impressive body of work. Same with Brendan, same with Zoey. Joshua Short is killing it as a reporter for WNDU in South Bend, Indiana — it’s certainly easy to imagine Mr. Short as a lead broadcaster for, say, CNN, MSNBC, ABC Nightly News, etc. I’m just glad we were able to get the two articles out of him that we could. You will continue to see our work being published on bigger platforms, it’s just not going to be here. i65 will stay up to serve as reference work or in case anyone gets nostalgic — I know I certainly will.

On behalf of myself, Ross, and all of the former writers: thank you and goodbye.